Day 35: Thursday
We had more group presentations in class, which I did a pretty good job of paying attention to, and then we had our last lecture from Rocky! He talked more about Florentine art, and of course everything he said inspired us to go see the pieces he talked about. A group of us also decided we wanted to pay extra for him to take us to see the David and lecture us on it, and Petrie got it all arranged with Accent. After class we came home to a fixed sink and a “fixed” stove aka one working burner. But it was very welcoming because we were finally able to cook in our own apartment, even if we could only use one burner. That also meant we could finally do our nasty dishes! Elli and I then decided to go to Orsanmichele because Rocky had told us it was open for free all week, and it had the replica statue of the Dante one we saw in the Bargello. We found that the museum was closed, but we went inside the church. Then we went to Santa Maria Novella near the train station because Rocky had showed us a famous work of art, the Holy Trinity, which is there. There were also a lot of other great works of art, and the church had helpful plaques everywhere, which is surprisingly a rare thing. We spent quite a bit of time inside, saw some Medici stuff, of course, and then went to the grocery store after we got home. We finally found one closer than the Esselunga, which was right off Ponte Vecchio. It was much easier to get our groceries and carry them home. We had been wanting to go see the vespers, at the suggestion, not of Rocky for once, but of Freya. So we climbed up Piazzale Michelangelo, which was quite the workout, but completely worth the view, and head over to San Miniato al Monte just in time for the vespers. The service is monks singing the entire time, and we didn’t want to stay for the entire thing, so we hung back, listened, admired the church, and frowned upon the tourists taking pictures and walking around loudly. After we felt we had stayed a sufficient amount of time, we walked back down to Piazzale Michelangelo to take a bunch of touristy photos. The walk back down was much easier, but in the Florentine heat, anything is exerting and exhausting, and I was glad to get home. We made dinner ON OUR STOVE, which was packaged chicken cordon bleu and mashed potatoes. We had an excessive amount of mashed potatoes so I brought some over to Mike and David. Then we were finally able to do our week’s worth of nasty dishes, but we had to boil water for it because our water still will not run hot enough for long enough to get any dishes done. That took quite some time, but it was so nice to finally have it done. Then we watched a video someone had found of Rocky on the History Channel! Then some people decided to go out, and Elli, Mike, and I left to meet up with Kari, Breanne, and Andrew at the Red Garter.
